Chapter 23

23

T he moment her footsteps pass over the thread hold of the tunnel, her ears pop and warm air spills over her arms, suffocating after the brisk cold of the forest.

Chloe shivers, once, then sheds her jacket, twisting it into something smaller and storing it into the backpack.

The back of Chloe’s mind tickles at walking into a trap - it always did. Even if she was fully meaning to walk into a trap, her mind tells her otherwise.

When one’s entire self is attuned to traps, attuned to locks and snares, it becomes impossible to ignore them. Impossible to not see them, to not be aware. They nestle under the skin, a pebble in the shoe, a flickering lightbulb in the corner of the eye.

Chloe wishes she could ignore them, just sometimes. Not in life and death situations, not when she has to achieve something, but when she’s walking somewhere and someone put a snare to tell how many people strode over a certain tile…she could use a chance to do so without her nervous system dumping a week's worth of adrenaline into her body.

The tunnel stretches on, black, lit only by spare runes sketched into the wall itself, but Killian steps lightly in front of her, one arm holding her behind him.

He flicks his hand towards a single security camera, and the glass cracks, falling down with a merry sort of tinkle to the tunnel floor.

The tracks gleam in the dim light.

“Is that how you broke through the locking pits?” Killian asks, his voice startlingly loud in the tunnel. “You changed them so they couldn’t work?”

That would’ve taken way more energy than Chloe could’ve ever had, especially without laying a hand against them, so she just shakes her head, squinting at the protections along the wall.

She doesn’t know their protocol for the alarm going down, they might’ve implemented something until it’s reinstated, but now they’re beyond the basic levels of security.

“I broke into the wall and climbed through it,” Chloe murmurs, staring at the perfectly slick stone, at the small crease where the elevator opens up. There’s a lock and key, obviously meant for the guards. “Less protection in the wall.”

Again, the funny sort of smile.

It’s a simple lock, the sort found in elevators around the country meant for firemen in rescue. Chloe’s seen hundreds of them.

There’s a ward to stop alchemy from changing it, from magic from brute forcing it open, so Chloe grabs at her lockpicks, even though her fingertips still tremble.

Killian’s eyes are heavy on that, as she spreads the picks in her hands, like a carpenter evaluating which sort of nail to use.

“I just need you to break the demon barrier, that’s what else I need you for,” he says, almost cajoling. “Get that and I can do everything else.”

She’s not going to let him do all the research gathering, but she gets what he’s saying.

“I’m okay,” she says, then flicks her eyes up to the camera down the tunnel, pointed in the other direction, and before she even completes the thought, he waves his hand, cracking that glass, too.

Convenient.

The lock is so simple she just flicks to the wiggle key, and it pops open in under ten seconds without magic, revealing the control panel.

It’s more of a deterrent to errant teenagers than any actual security.

“How have you not taken down all of their bases?” Killian asks, leaning casually against the wall, staring down at her as she ponders the control panel. “Go in, break the defenses, break everyone out, leave. You said you’ve been out for years.”

“What, with no backup?” Chloe asks, before keying the elevator down to them.

It’s a risk, of course, but no other stairs are available. The elevator whirs up, quiet in the stone, though Killian leans away from the wall as it does, twisting his face as if it’s distasteful.

“Did you just hide?” he asks, as the elevator beeps down to them. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Thanks,” Chloe mutters sarcastically, before the door whooshes open.

Revealing a demon trap painted onto the tile in ink.

For a split second, Killian recoils back, before getting himself under control.

Chloe strides into it, before breaking it with a jerk, pain ricocheting up her palm.

“Easy,” she says, and Killian flicks to the security camera in the elevator, cracking the glass in two, before edging his way into the elevator, like he thinks the remnants of the trap will bite him, too.

His breathing hitches the moment the elevator doors slick shut, but instead of staring out at the door, he turns to her, sudden and intense.

“I saw these doors too many times,” he murmurs, a now-familiar hand coming up and cradling her chin. “I have no wish to see them again.”

Chloe wouldn’t want to see the doors to her prison, either. Would much rather stare into the face of someone so striking as Killian, as the double self in front of her.

The doors whoosh closed, and he scrambles to grab her hand, peering at it.

“I’m fine,” Chloe says.

“It hurt you,” he replies, deeply skeptical. “Don’t think I’m not aware of that.”

“Weird,” Chloe says, the elevator whirring upwards, her ears popping. “Lots of wards hurt.”

The look he gives her is withering, but she’s dealt with Ambra for a while now.

“This’ll just happen,” she says, then wriggles her fingers at him, showing him just how unharmed she is. “Lots of people like to put snaps in their wards.”

Her entire hand had been bleeding when they finished with Toronto, everything she touched turning slick with blood.

He briefly, ever so briefly, tightens his grip on her hand, before releasing her hand. “They shouldn’t.”

Considering all the protections she had seen around his house with the kid, she didn’t think he was one to talk.

There are silencing spells on the elevator, closing in on all the sound, so their words fall flat in the space, and no other peep makes its way in. There could be alarms going, the entire base could be mobilized, they would have no way of knowing, until…

Just as fast as she could breathe, they pass through the giant demon ward, and Killian sucks in a sudden inhale.

“I got it,” Chloe says, then snags the magic before it’s out of reach.

There’s no time for finesse in this one, no time for her to sus out the easiest, sneakiest way to dismantle it, so she rips it apart, vicious.

Wards like this live because they’re hard for normal humans to detect. Most magicians, if they don’t physically see them, have no idea of their existence.

But Chloe, with her training, and Chloe, brought back from the dead, they stand out as vivid as if carved from neon.

Pinpricks of pain dance across her fingertips, and single droplets of blood well up against the dust.

She’ll have to disinfect that later.

“Got it,” Chloe says, shaking out her hand, before glancing up at Killian.

The human face staring back at her is blank, neutral, but the demon face underneath is a rictus of fear.

“Woah,” Chloe says, leaning back, her heart pounding, and it snaps his attention to her, his eyes wide.

He’s terrified.

Whatever he faced here before, even with all of his abilities, terrified him. Scarred him to the point where even beneath all the bluster, he can barely breathe.

“Hey,” Chloe whispers, as the elevator whisks ever upwards, reaching out and touching his arm. “We’re okay.”

He turns his head to stare directly at where her hand touches the sleeve of his shirt, human face still impassive.

Before he exhales, and his power floods through the tiny elevator, bitter and vivid and so much more than it was in just the forest.

“I can teleport you out, now,” he says, his voice still half choked. “I can do the rest if you want to run.”

Which she does, she always wants to run, but she shakes her head, a lump in her throat.

He nods, a flicker of relief across his face, before his expressions return, the analytical light back on his eyes, though she can still see the jump of his pulse in his neck.

“There are four other demons here,” he says, staring hard against the elevator wall. “Two in stasis, one in a lab, one in dissection.”

“Dissection?” Chloe blurts out, but before he can answer, the elevator jerks to a stop.

Immediately, he swings her behind him, gripping her arm tight, a golden bubble blooming around them, encompassing her.

Chloe gasps, her black hair fluttering in front of her face, the gold shimmering in the small elevator.

But the door doesn’t open, remaining just as fully shut.

“This isn’t the correct level,” Killian murmurs, his voice so tight Chloe could balance across it. “This isn’t even close.”

Even the edges of Chloe’s jacket lift, as if from a stiff breeze, flicking in the wind, and her eyes sting.

She reaches out, grips the back of his Henley, fisting the fabric in her hand, as the elevator jerks, almost knocking her off balance.

They could trap them here, keep them stuck in the elevator. Gas them out, suffocate them, and…

His eyes flick back towards her, before he softens his stance, still not letting her go.

“You’re safe,” he says, voice low and thrumming with power. “They’re not going to strike you.”

“Thanks,” Chloe breathes, her eyes tracing to the corners of the elevator. The edges of the walls crease easily into the ceiling, no obvious opening. There’s an air filter, but it just goes to a narrow vent, not big enough to crawl through.

Though dismantling it…she might be able to break the joint to the vent, opening up the wall, and…

And then they’d be in an elevator shaft, and near as she can tell, Demons can’t actually fly.

“Has the layout of the building changed too much for you to teleport?” she asks, and her voice squeaks, high.

Being in a demon bubble is terrifying.

She’s heard her whole life how they’re deadly, how they’re a harbinger of being completely out of your depth, to turn and run when you see one, and being inside one…

The threads of power warp, coarse, around her, like she’s an accepted part of the bubble.

He’s silent, for a moment, no sound meeting her ears except for the ragged sandpaper of her breath, before he exhales, gentling his hand on her arm, but still holding her close. “Unfortunately,” he says, clipped and controlled. “What I can teleport to is…not ideal.”

The elevator jerks again, and she stumbles into his back, but he doesn’t move.

And Chloe’s broken out of so many things.

“Can you teleport to something in line of sight?” she asks, and this time, her voice is steady. No squeaking.

He doesn’t respond, just tilting his head back towards her.

So the twists, staring at the back wall, the one facing away from the door, still keeping an arm awkwardly behind her to keep a hand on him.

Who knows if the demon bubble will kill her if she lets go.

Or what pain she would face.

Exhaling past that, she places her free palm onto the slick metal of the elevator wall. Condensation drips across her hand, colder than the air, but she squeezes her eyes shut.

And focuses.

It’s a normal metal elevator, made of steel and aluminum, an easy enough metal to change.

The floor jerks beneath them, and Killian’s warm hand tightens around her arm again.

“Chloe…” he starts, before the door splits open in front of him.

With a flinch of his hand, a shield—warping and red—flashes around them, before something strikes him, rocking him back.

And Chloe’s not a combat mage.

Her hand still against the metal wall, she shoves, fluxing it immediately into putty. It wobbles out, before tearing apart, revealing a perfectly normal elevator shaft, the sort found in office buildings around the country.

Another blast of something, so vicious it knocks Killian against Chloe, and she pulls him towards the back of the elevator, her heart in her throat, before a splash of black blood splatters against the wall in front of her.

Chloe stumbles, her breath almost squeaking away from her, stumbling towards the open wall.

There’s a gasp, a fragment of a motion, before Killian twists, wrapping his arms around her, shoving her into the elevator shaft.

Her feet meet the air, hanging in perfect crystalline stasis for one moment, before—

With another jerk, she clatters to a floor, the tile slick, Killian falling heavy over her, and her ears ring.

They’re somewhere else, the lights bright and blinding, and Chloe’s ears ring.

She scrambles up from underneath him, and he slumps to the floor.

“Killian?” She gasps, and her voice is tinny in the space. “Killian, are you…”

His head jerks up, his eyes flashing red at her, before…

He…

Separates.

The body, the human body, flops empty to the floor, still half draped on her, the eyes open and unseeing and a perfectly normal human brown.

And Killian…